2
“Word has it, the baron has a new wife.”
To Bariel’s citizens, this wasn’t particularly interesting news, worthy of only a snide remark here and there between farm laborers.
The citizens of the Bariel baronry didn’t think too highly of Baron Lyp Bariel, the man who managed their lands. If anything, they thought poorly of him. His laws and taxes gave little consideration to his people. Not only did he show no kindness to them—but he also rarely showed his face. To command his people to like him would be a tall order indeed.
With such animosity between a lord and his people, seeds of rebellion were inevitable. Revolts had been plotted many times during the past decade.
However, while this lord cared little for the prosperity of his people, he was abnormally shrewd when it came to their conspiracies. Ultimately, every rebellion had been quashed with incredible brutality, only worsening relations between lord and people with each passing day.
Because of this, news of their lord’s marriage—what should have been a blessed occasion—was trivial news to the common people. A landlord approaching old age taking a young wife several years his junior didn’t even fall into the range of minor curiosity. After all, they had little doubt this new wife would be no better—she would undoubtedly hoard the fruits of their labor so that she could live in the lap of luxury.
Someday, Lyp’s life might come to an end, bringing the heirless Bariel house to ruin. That was the only ray of hope that had kept the citizens living another day. This was their first assessment of her—their assessment before they met Priscilla Bariel, the red woman.
“Ha! What a tasteless and spineless lineup,” she spat as she observed the village’s number one farm and its caretaker. The contempt in her voice and the words she said with great disdain caused many heads to look up. They sensed a barely restrained rage in her, but the moment they saw her, they lost the ability to speak.
Standing before them was the red woman.
Her hair, orange as the flaming sun, was tied back with a barrette, and her ample curves were highlighted by her deep-red dress. Her lips, painted lightly in red, were chiseled in a smirk, and her eyes burned with abundant red flame as she returned the gazes of the people staring at her.
Even the fan she used to cool herself was red—she was crimson from head to toe. The effect was so visually striking that even though the people knew at a glance that she was of higher status than them, each and every one of them forgot how to speak in her presence.
The red woman was so enchanting that it completely eclipsed her outrageous outfit. Everyone in her presence, regardless of gender, trembled at her unfathomable beauty.
“Remove those impure gazes from me at once. What daring yet lowly and foolish peasants.”
However, her bearing and her jeers ruined any positive impression they had. Noticing her contempt after the fact, her subjects shoved the rage that burned in their eyes deep into the bottoms of their souls as they stared at the ground.
The red woman’s words were humiliating. But at a glance, they could tell her status was well above theirs. In other words, no good would come of standing up to her. It was best to handle her the way they handled everyone in power—bow down, hide their discontent, and wait for the storm to pass.
“Aha, now I see. The long years of resignation stole every spark of rebellion out of your spines and instilled a defeatist mentality into you. Guess that old geezer really is a worthy nobleman after all. He clearly knows how to discipline.”
As the woman looked over the peasants in understanding, the head worker of the field spoke up in a resolute tone. “W-we recognize you as a noblewoman, my lady. What brings you to our humble village today…?”
As the owner of the best field in the village, he was technically their representative, though it wasn’t much of a contest. He was the only one who had any justification asking a noble what business they had here.
“Slow down, pleb. I suppose a sudden visit from a striking beauty such as I would surprise you, but I shall conduct my own business on my terms without any pressure to hurry from anybody. You should count your blessings and forget the passage of time as you catch glimpses of my beauty out of the corner of your eye.”
The red woman leaned in close to the field owner, close enough to breathe on him as she spoke alluringly into his face. He shrank back, noticeably flustered. And who could blame him?
The field owner was old enough to be the red woman’s father, but her sheer allure and magnetism dissolved the years between them, evoking the man’s primal awareness of her womanhood. Enchantress—that was the word best suited for her.
“Ahaaa…quite illuminating.”
After making the field owner wither, the woman walked around the fields as if she owned them. Meanwhile, the people were preoccupied stealing glances at her—just as she had told them to do. If they resumed their field labor, nobody would have a right to complain to them, but nobody showed any inclination of doing so.
Everyone feared standing out from the crowd and drawing the attention of that red woman.
“Now I see. I’ll take this one and this one…and those two over there. They aren’t much different anyway. Consider yourself lucky to have fallen into my good graces.”
After a walk around the fields, the woman gave a nod of approval. Then she stared the field owner up and down, giggling seductively when she noticed him shivering. Her smile, suggestively evil as it was, also held such beauty that nobody could dare look away.
“You, pleb—you own the biggest fields in this baronry, yes?”
“Y-yes, my lady.”
“I can tell by the sight of them. Though they are meager, they are large. Your ambitions are ill-suited to the quality of the fruit from those rotten old trees—much like a certain baron I could mention.”
Her words, dripping with contempt and ridicule, were about none other than Lyp. The people noticed the audacity of her statement a moment after the fact, their faces paling in shock.
They considered their dominion lord a celestial being. They were so used to this perspective that their minds could not comprehend the concept of a being higher than him. However, that was a groundless suspicion.
“Anyway, your fields are well managed. It makes a good stepping stone for comparison. There is another who has received the blessings my power bestows. On the other side of the road—the owner of those four meager fields.”
The woman pointed to what was a wasteland in comparison with the tracts the biggest field owner tended. The owner of those fields had wasted away, just like the land itself. He and his family survived day by day only by the kind support of his fellow villagers.
When the red woman saw that villager, her eyes filled with dreadful emotions. It was mostly contempt, malice, and vicious superiority.
“Well, no matter. A little water on those withered stalks, and everyone will notice the change it brings.”
Shrugging off the stupefied expression on the villagers’ faces, the woman looked away in boredom. Then she pointed at the withered field and politely told the man something. Only the man could hear what she whispered in his ear; nobody else knew what sort of unreasonable demands she was making. But anybody who saw how dumbly he nodded like a puppet felt sorry for the man.
After she finished whispering her message, the woman crossed her arms in satisfaction. Her ample bosom gave a large jiggle above her arms, and the female villagers stared daggers at the men who ogled in spite of themselves.
“Oh, I forgot to mention this, but my name is Priscilla Bariel. I am the new head of the House of Bariel, lord of these lands. Relay the message to everyone who wasn’t here today. I shall graciously overlook the insolence I observed today, but only on the grounds that you are all ignorant and unenlightened.”
With that, she delivered crushing parting words to the peasants, who had finally regained their senses. It was only after the fact that they realized Priscilla was Lyp Bariel’s new wife. They did not understand why she had visited their fields without bringing him with her, but her arrogant recklessness certainly reminded them of Lyp.
And the fact that she was a young lady meant any hopes of her dying of old age and liberating them were dashed. For many long years thereafter, they would suffer under her laws, equally tyrannical as Lyp’s.
Priscilla’s arrival instilled fear and unease in everyone—which was completely forgotten one month later.
And that was because the man’s fields that Priscilla had singled out would later be blessed with unbelievable abundance.
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